S.C. GOP slams Fla. primary move

Florida’s plan to move its primary to Jan. 31 is on the verge of pushing the first voting of the presidential campaign back to New Year’s again, with South Carolina and the other early states preparing to move even further up the calendar in response.

In comments reported Wednesday, Florida’s House Speaker Dean Cannon told CNN that he expects the state’s primary date-setting nine-member commission, some of whose members he appointed, to select the new date when they meet Friday.

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Saying he was “really disgusted” by Florida’s actions, South Carolina GOP Chairman Chad Connelly predicted that the action set “a terrible precedent” that will make each of the early state presidential nominating contests less relevant.

Connelly, who has sole authority to set the date of South Carolina’s votes, said he and the other officially sanctioned early nominating states — Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada — are planning a joint announcement for Thursday to set their dates together. The announcement, he said, will preserve South Carolina’s place at the beginning of the calendar.

To keep ahead of Florida, that will almost certainly mean that the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary will be at the beginning of January — a full month before the Republican National Committee had wanted.

“Here’s the bottom line,” Connelly said. “I’m going to have the first-in-the-South, and everybody’s effort to be more relevant is going to result in everyone becoming more irrelevant.”

Connelly had made repeated overtures to Florida to tie the two states’ primary dates together, in a plan that would have put Florida fifth. He was furious at Florida’s apparent decision to move without him.

“It’s just amazing,” Connelly told POLITICO. “I don’t know why we set up rules to have some of them that are flexible. Just the talk makes you think the rules don’t have any teeth.”

RNC rules dictate that only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina can hold presidential nominating contests before March 6. States that violate the rule are subject to losing some of their delegates to the national convention next summer.

“The Republican Party is the rule-of-law party,” Connelly said. “They say we respect that, but you see so many states defying the calendar and flying in the face of who we say we are. It’s not just going against our principles. These are some of the same people who … voted on that principle.”